Atlantic Coleoptera. 225 
amongst the Canarian material which had been submitted 
to him by Mr. G. R. Crotch, and which was collected by 
the latter in the island of Gomera. Dr. Sharp having 
communicated this fact to me, I requested him to exa- 
mine critically the very variable species (so abundant in 
many parts of the Madeiran and Canarian archipelagos) 
which I had hitherto referred, on the authority originally 
of Dr. Aubé, to the melanocephalus of Olivier; and the 
result 1s that he considered it as wrongly assigned to 
the latter, being identical, rather, with what he had 
httle doubt is the politus of Kiister (a species which 
occurs in Mediterranean latitudes, and which he had 
himself received from the south of Spain). This, there- 
fore, apart from affording an absolute addition to the 
catalogue in the European P. maritimus (examples of 
which had certainly never before come beneath my no- 
tice) , necessitates a change in the nomenclature of the 
other species—erroneously regarded by myself as Olivier’s 
melanocephalus; and I would desire, therefore, to give 
the two following diagnoses—which will not only point 
out the difference between the species in question, but 
which will enable me also to correct the synonymy of the 
latter, and to call attention to its topographical range as 
hitherto ascertained. 
Philhydrus maritimus. 
P. oblongo-ovalis, parum convexus, subnitidus, luride 
fusco-testaceus sed in limbo sensim dilutior, ubique cre- 
bre et argute punctatus (punctis in elytris vix remotiori- 
bus); antennarum clava obscuriore ; coleopteris seriebus 
tribus irregularibus punctorum majorum utrinque longi- 
tudinaliter notatis. 
Mas: tarsorum unguiculis fere angulatim curvatis, ad 
basin dente valido mstructis. 
Fem.: tarsorum unguiculis ad basin dente minore in- 
structis. 
Long. corp. lin. vix 2$. 
Philhydrus maritimus, Thoms., Skand. Col. 11. 96 (1860) ; 
Sharp, Ann. Nat. Hist. 14 (1870). 
‘Hab.—Canariensis (Gom.); a DD. Crotch estate A.D. 
1864 parce deprehensus. 
